


That Day everything changed

by FamousRory



Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 01:23:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1570787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FamousRory/pseuds/FamousRory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What’s the point of surviving anyway, when there’s nothing left?”</p>
<p>Woohyun looks intently at Sunggyu, whose legs are folded against his chest, chin resting on his knees and eyes looking far away. “I didn’t lose everything in what happened. And I found better things.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Day everything changed

_“Run. Just run. Run until your legs can’t hold you anymore. Run like your life depends on it. No, run because your life depends on it. Keep running. Run until you’re safe, or until you die. Find a shelter. Build one if there’s not. Become an animal. There’s no humanity anymore, let your wild instincts guide you. Don’t think. Don’t think. Just run.” The voice stops. A door. A white door, and then a street, a dark, empty, dirty street. And the noises. The awful noises, coming behind, coming closer, following him everywhere. And then the scream. “Sunggyu.” The voice is screaming his name. “Run”. He does what the voice shouts. He’s tired. He doesn’t feel his legs anymore. But he runs. Like his father shouts. Screams, again. The screams stab his body, his heart and his ears. They break the night, they smash the sky. He still hears the screams, but there’s only silence. He doesn’t want to look back. He knows. There’s nothing behind. Not anymore. Not anymore._

Sunggyu wakes up suddenly, sweat covering his whole body. He’s cold and hot at the same time, and feels sick. He tries to get up, but his legs are weak. He can’t stand up anymore, not since a few days. He wants to vomit but there’s nothing to throw up, so he just stays on his knees, clenching his empty stomach and closes his eyes so the walls would stop spinning round. He makes the same dream every night, over and over, but as the time passes it’s becoming worse. His mind is going weak the same way his body does. Sunggyu tries to stand up once more, but it’s impossible. The dark comes over him and he disappears in a sleep without dream, the fever slightly increasing.

 

 

A backpack on the shoulders, hands clenching around an iron stick, Woohyun jumps as a raindrop falls on his bare arm. Other raindrops followed the first, and in less than thirty seconds, the man was completely soaked, walking under the shower in the middle of an empty street. He sighs, and looks around him to find a place to stay while it’s raining.

There are buildings on every sides of the street, and Woohyun tries to open the doors. Locked. Locked. Locked. It’s only after a hundred of meters under the rain that he manages to open the door of a bar. Woohyun thinks he’s lucky, but that’s only until he realizes there’s no difference standing here or outside. It would have been better if there was a roof.

He makes a few steps further into the bar, and looks at the floor when his footstep makes a different noise. He kicks the floor a few times with his stick, and the hollow sound indicates him he’s on a trapdoor. He has to push some stones and heavy pieces of wood to clear the trapdoor, and he pulls with all his strength on the handle made of a thick iron ring. As soon as it’s open, an awful odor of vomit, sweat, and rot makes him take a few steps back. His hopes of finding some food here vanish away.

He puts his shirt on his nose to stop the stink and tries to close the trapdoor, when he hears a faint sigh. The rain is getting heavier as each minute passes, and Woohyun doesn’t know if the noise comes from the basement of the bar, or from the outside. It could be a lost animal, or something else. He doesn’t want to lose time in this stinky and scary place, and he’s about to leave when he hears some noise again. This time, he’s sure it comes from the cellar, but what he doesn’t know is what exactly made the noise. He puts his backpack on the floor and opens it to take a light torch, before walking carefully to the opening on the floor. The stench is heavier as he comes closer, and his lunch starts to goes up his throat. Woohyun swallows with disgust, and stretches his arm out with the torch, trying to keep some distance with the disgusting cellar as much as possible. He distinguishes the silhouette of a body on the floor, but can’t determine yet if it is alive, or still human. A part of his mind is telling him to just go away, in a dry place and forget about that, but another part wants him to go down in the cellar to check the body. It could be someone in help. It takes a few seconds for him to make his decision, before he turns on his left. He inhales some fresh air, takes his iron bar in a hand and the torch in another, and disappears into the cellar.

The body is lying on the floor, and Woohyun can clearly see the chest going up and down as it breathes with difficulty. He pushes it with his iron stick to turn the body around. It’s a young man, a human for sure, but in a really bad state. Woohyun kneels next to the almost dead guy, and checks his heart beat, that seems pretty faint under his fingers. Without thinking twice about it, he lifts the body on his shoulder, before climbing up the ladder to escape from the stinky cellar. He grabs his bag with one hand and throws it on his other shoulder and walks as fast as he can into a better place, a dry one, where he will be able to take care of the guy.

 

 

 

For the first time since a month, Sunggyu opens his eyes naturally and not after his nightmare. A sunray is hitting is face, he has a warm cover on his body and a nice smell of soup is floating in the air. Sunggyu closes his eyes and opens them again, not knowing if he’s still sleeping or not; it doesn’t look like the place he has been stuck in for the past days (weeks?). He hears someone walking next to him, and tries to sit to see what’s coming. A hand comes quickly on his forehead as the other lays on his torso, pushing him back on the mattress.

“Stay quiet. You need to rest, you’re really weak. You would be dead if I hadn’t found you last week. I’m Woohyun by the way.”

The voice is calm, and smooth, but Sunggyu can’t help the shivers of fears that go down his spine. The last time he saw humans (or whatever they are), he lost his father; the last person he had left. He tries to escape from the hand that is still in his forehead, but the effort needed is too much for him. He only closes his eyes and hopes for the other to leave him alone. As soon as he would be able to move, he will leave far away. According to his experience, since that Day it’s better to stay away from the other people; would they be your family or unknown persons doesn’t matter.

 

It takes Sunggyu one week and a half after waking up to stop being scared of Woohyun and trying to escape whenever the latter comes close. He still doesn’t trust the man, but at least he accepts the food the guy gives him. He even let Woohyun wash him one evening after it had rain all day and the containers on the roof were full of clear water.

Sunggyu still doesn’t speak. Sometimes he tried, he wanted to, but no sounds could come out of his mouth. Woohyun doesn’t seem to care, he talks for two. They live (hide) in a small apartment on the 5th floor of an empty building, just under the roof, in a part of the city Sunggyu doesn’t know. If you can still call that a city. Woohyun goes out every morning when the sun is up enough in the sky, and comes back when the sun is about to set, sometimes with food, clothes, or whatever he found outside, sometimes without anything but blood on his clothes and hollow eyes. They eat what they can; mostly cans and dry soups. Woohyun finds a garden center one day, and starts bringing vegetable plants to make a garden on the roof. But the vegetables need time to grow up. It’s been weeks since they last tasted fresh vegetables and meat; before they even met, before the Day.

At night, Woohyun always goes on the roof to see the stars and tries to take Sunggyu with him, but he refuses. He doesn’t want to see the outside.

 

 

One night, Sunggyu wakes up with a shout, sitting on his bed, tears on his cheeks. Woohyun is here in a matter of seconds, hand on Sunggyu’s forehead, the other cupping his cheek and drying the tears with his thumb.

“D-Dad… Dad… my… m-my dad…he’s d-dead.” Woohyun’s thumb stops moving for a second, before his hands leave Sunggyu’s face to bring him in a hug. 

“Run. I have to-to run. I n-need to r-run.” Sunggyu tries to stand up, but the arms holding him are stronger.

“It’s just a nightmare. You are safe here. I’m with you. It will be okay. As long as we are together, as long as I’m here, it will be okay.”

It takes the rest of the night for Sunggyu to calm down, thanks to Woohyun’s sooth words and soft hands that rub his back. They fall asleep when the sun starts to light up the sky, bodies tangled together. Since that night, Sunggyu is not mute anymore; but that doesn’t mean he starts talking again. Every word, every sentence, is more or less related to some souvenirs from  his old life, and it’s painful; and it’s not like he has something to say either.

 

Sunggyu has no idea of how the world looks like now, since Woohyun is the only one going out. According to what Sunggyu said and what Woohyun deduced, when he was found in the basement it had been three weeks he was rotting there. At first it was to hide from the things, but then he got stuck in it when the roof fell down. He was lucky enough it was a bar’s cellar and they had some food left, enough for the first two weeks.

Every time Woohyun goes out, he always comes back with something for Sunggyu. He brings him books, games, useless and ugly ornaments (Woohyun thinks it’s funny to see what kind of horrors people could have in their house), or plants and flowers. Once he even brings black hair dye, and takes care of Sunggyu’s now bicolor (how can you think about dying your hair regularly when it’s the end of the world?) and too long hair. The result is far from perfect, but Sunggyu feels better.

The apartment they live in is not big, but not small either. They mostly occupy the main room, a clear living room where they stay when Woohyun doesn’t go out, and where they sleep at night. Woohyun made some kind of curtains that they put at night on the windows so they can use a small light and move without being seen by the things outside. Most of the time, they spend their evenings playing games, or Woohyun reads a book to Sunggyu; they go to sleep early anyway, because they can’t waste the lights batteries.

 

 

Woohyun is happy he found Sunggyu that day. The guy is more than quite, almost never speaks and looks completely lost and scared all the time (even if he’s not, Woohyun figured), but Woohyun doesn’t care. He’s not alone anymore; and he could have found worse company. He wants to protect him.

The Day the world changed, everything went really fast. The news were talking about some kind of virus that makes people go mad and transform them in blood-thirsty animals since a few days, but it was far away, in other countries, other cities. At least that’s what everybody thought, and nobody worried immediately. But then, two cases were found in the city, and five more the day after, and twenty the next day. It was a Friday, Woohyun remembers, and he was going out for shopping when the whole city turned crazy. The streets were full of these murderers, monsters, whatever you call them. He went back home running, trying to reach his parents and brother on phone, without success. When the night took over the city, everything was already lost; screams were heard from every corner, the melody of shotguns and explosions and cars crashing as background.

Now, the city looks deserted. But Woohyun knows it’s not, the _things_ just don’t go out under the sun. They hide in the underground during day.  He doesn’t mind going alone to look for supplies, even if Sunggyu’s help would be appreciated. Woohyun is afraid Sunggyu is not strong enough to handle this new world. He still has nightmare of what happened two months ago with his dad; but nowadays you have to let go of the past and just move forward to survive, or you die. The past, regrets and memories are only weaknesses according to Woohyun.

 

 

One day Woohyun doesn’t come home when the sun sets, and Sunggyu knows something is wrong. He worries so much he even considers the idea of going out to look for him, but that would be stupid since he would probably die in less than five minutes. Sunggyu keeps walking in circles around the living-room until he hears some footsteps in the corridor outside the apartment. They don’t sound like Woohyun, but they don’t sound like a monster either; they are slow, heavy, and hesitating. Sunggyu’s heart almost stop when the door of the apartment open, and his body refuses to move; then he realizes that it’s Woohyun behind the door. A dirty, tired, covered in blood Woohyun, but still his Woohyun; not a monster Woohyun.

“I opened… I opened the wrong door.” Woohyun lets out a small laugh, but it’s far from funny. Sunggyu walks to him when he sees Woohyun wavers on his legs, and half carries him in the kitchen to sit him on a chair.

Woohyun has scratches on his face, hands and arms, and blood on his clothes. There’s a cut on his forehead that looks worse than the other injuries. Sunggyu doesn’t really know what to do, but he remembers what Woohyun does when he injures himself outside. He puts some water to boil, and while waiting for it to be ready, he takes Woohyun t-shirt off. The boy doesn’t seem to suffer from bigger injuries than the one on his forehead, and the blood is mostly not his. Then, when the boiled water has cooled a little, he cleans Woohyun’s body and disinfects his wounds.

“Are you going to…” Sunggyu can’t finish the question. He’s afraid by the answer Woohyun will give him.

“No. I injured myself when I escaped. They didn’t touch me.” Sunggyu can’t help the sigh of relief that passes his lips.

Woohyun’s voice seems far away, like his eyes. Sunggyu doesn’t know what to do; so he just puts his hand on Woohyun’s head, like he always do when Sunggyu has nightmares. Woohyun closes his eyes, and rests his head on Sunggyu’s torso, arms circling his waist slowly. They stay like that for a few minutes, Woohyun sitting on the chair, hugging Sunggyu who is still standing in front of him.

“One of them was my friend in high school.” Sunggyu can feel his shirt becoming wet with Woohyun tears. Comforting people was never something he was good at; but he continues to move his hand in Woohyun’s hair, the other resting on his shoulder, until he calms down and they both go to sleep.

 

The day after, Woohyun is back to his normal self, but Sunggyu knows that something changed. He realized that he cares for Woohyun. A lot.

 

 

 

It’s now two months and half since Woohyun saved Sunggyu (half a year after the Day), and Woohyun is on his way to explore a new building to find batteries for the torch lamp when realization comes to his mind. He hasn’t seen any _monsters_ (as Sunggyu calls them) since a few days, and now, in full sunlight, two of those monsters are struggling on the floor to get up.

They are all dying. Naturally, stupidly, for a reason Woohyun doesn’t know, the monsters are all coming out in sunlight one after the other, and they die. Sunggyu almost smiles when Woohyun tells him as soon as he came back to their shelter.

That night, Sunggyu accepts for the first time to go on the roof with Woohyun.

“Look at the sky, isn’t it amazing? I never knew there were so many stars upon us before, because of all the lights of the city. Now that there’s no light anymore, we can even see the galaxy. Do you see it?” They are sitting next to each other on an old bench, Woohyun’s blanket around their shoulders. Woohyun has as many stars in his eyes as there are above them.

“Do you think we are the only left?” Sunggyu doesn’t turn his face away from the sky, but he feels Woohyun’s eyes on him.

“I’ve seen people sometimes I think. From far away though, so I was never sure they were people.” Woohyun pauses when he feels Sunggyu’s shoulders lowering slowly. “But the city is big. And the world is even bigger. I never explored really far from our place.”

The words _our place_ resonate in Sunggyu’s ears.

“How can you do it?” Sunggyu’s voice is almost a whisper.

“Do what?”

“Survive. Wake up every morning.” There’s a pause, but Woohyun feels like Sunggyu wants to say something more. “Smile.”

“What else can I do?”

“You can give up. You can stop struggling for your life. What’s the point of surviving anyway, when there’s nothing left?”

Woohyun looks intently at Sunggyu, whose legs are folded against his chest, chin resting on his knees and eyes looking far away.

“I didn’t lose everything in what happened. And I found better things.”

“So you’re lucky. What do you have now that’s better than before?”

“I have my own apartment for the first time in my life. The neighborhood is not that bad, the neighbors not too loud. And the rent is affordable.”

Sunggyu raises his head from his knees to look into Woohyun’s eyes.

“Now we can see the stars. I’ve always loved stars.”Woohyun’s fingers brush some hair on Sunggyu’s forehead. “And I have you.”

“I’m useless. I can’t even help you because I’m too scared. I’m a coward.”

“Maybe, but you also are comfortable; the best pillow I ever tried. And you are here when I come back after exploring the city. It’s enough for me.”

Woohyun’s fingers are now under Sunggyu’s chin. Sunggyu follow the movement the fingers want him to do, so he raises his head a little bit more in Woohyun’s direction. And he feels warm and reassuring lips on his own.

“You showed me how it feels to be in love. Who would have thought I had to wait for the world to be destroyed to know what love is?” Woohyun chuckles, and pulls Sunggyu in his arms, readjusting the blankets on their shoulders. “I don’t care if we are the only ones left on the planet, or that the world is completely destroyed. We can create our own world now. We can build it together. The monsters are disappearing, and soon everything will be clean anew, and we will have the whole planet for us. You and me, me and you. That’s all that matters.”

Sunggyu feels tears slowly falling on his cheeks, and for the first time it’s not tears of fear, or sadness. It’s hope, and relief. And now his lips curl up, and his shoulders are shaken by the laugh that comes out from his throat; it’s hoarse and rusty because it’s been months. Woohyun laughs with him, and tightens his arms, resting his head on Sunggyu’s shoulder.

 

Maybe it’s not totally the end. Maybe the Day was a new beginning. Maybe there’s still something to live for.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
